Neverquest Trojan infiltrates banks, Kaspersky warns

Kaspersky Lab has recorded thousands of attempts to infect computers used for online banking with a malicious program that its creators claim can attack “any bank in any country.”

The Neverquest Trojan banker supports almost every possible trick used to bypass online banking security systems: web injection, remote system access, and social engineering among others.

In light of the Trojan’s self-replication capabilities, a sharp rise in the number of attacks involving Neverquest can be expected, resulting in financial losses for users all over the world.

Kaspersky Lab noted that the holiday period in particular is a period of high malicious user activity with experts reporting instances as early as November.

By then posts had been sent to hacker forums about buying and selling databases to access bank accounts and other documents—used to open and manage the accounts to which stolen funds are sent.

Neverquest appeared on the market even earlier—an advertisement looking for a partner to work with the Trojan on the servers of a group of cybercriminals, with their support, was posted in July 2013.

“After wrapping up several criminal cases associated with the creation and proliferation of malware used to steal bank website data, a few ‘holes’ appeared on the black market, said Sergey Golovanov, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. "New malicious users are trying to fill these with new technologies and ideas. Neverquest is just one of the threats aiming to take over the leading positions previously held by programs like ZeuS and Carberp.”

The banking trojan, Neverquest, is continuing to evolve as it targets the Japanese, German and American banking sectors, according to security firm Symantec.

The malware allows hackers to steal bank login details from users by modifying the pages on financial sites, and spreads itself through social networks.

Symantec said: "The configuration file for Japan lists only eight major Japanese financial institutions as targets, compared to ten listed in the German configuration file and more than 50 in the US file."